Reports

Introducing the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Awareness Report

In August 2016, prominent Security Researcher Dan Kaminsky declared during his keynote address at the annual Black Hat USA conference that the Internet of Things (IoT) is the first technology that security professionals assume to be insecure "right out of the gate."

Two months after his talk, a major internet infrastructure company succumbed to a massive distributed denial-of-service attack triggered by a powerful botnet known as Mirai, which was primarily composed of hundreds of thousands of hijacked embedded devices.

While the attack rendered a portion of the internet inaccessible to many users in Europe and North America for several hours, it signified something arguably even bigger: This apparent acknowledgment and understanding of the threat posed by IoT wasn't translating into practice, and it certainly wasn't enough to avert disaster.

Fast forward to present day: How are IoT implementers and developers addressing the threat now, as use cases for IoT, market demand for connected devices and rates of adoption continue to soar even higher?

To find out, Trustwave commissioned industry analyst firm Osterman Research to produce the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Readiness Report, based on a survey of large and midsize North American businesses. The survey examines their use of IoT technologies, and challenges around adoption and security planning.

With IoT sitting atop many security prediction lists for 2018 - and legislation and standards to police the industry looming - we sought to discover exactly to what degree smart devices are permeating the workplace, how well the growing pains are being tamed, what is keeping security professionals from correcting course and what their expectations are for the future. The report also contains practical takeaway tips for both adopters and manufacturers.